The big mountain skiers and boarders who compete in the Freeride World Tour will return to Alaska this winter.
The Freeride World Tour set its 2016 schedule this week and for the second straight year Haines is among the five stops, with competition scheduled for March 17-25. The other four competitions are in Europe.
"Haines was a big addition for 2015," according to Kade Krichko of Powder magazine, "bringing competitive freeskiing to North America's heli skiing hot spot for the first time. It was also a logistical behemoth, as the FWT helicoptered an entire production team into the temperamental Chilkat Range in the throes of March.
"The event went off after several weather delays and was enough of a success to return in 2016."
The Freeride World Tour attracts some of the world's top freeskiers and snowboard freeriders to ungroomed backcountry powder on dangerously steep slopes.
Biologists cautious with goat hunts near Anchorage
Despite "healthy numbers" of mountain goats in Alaska Game Management Unit 14C near Anchorage, Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists say they're being cautious as they manage this year's hunt.
In the Lake George area, where a July survey counted 471 goats, only 23 of what biologists call "goat units" can be harvested. A billy equals one "goat unit" and a nanny counts for two.
In the Twentymile area, 135 goats were counted. Just six goat units may be harvested in the three-day season Sept.1-3.
All together, 852 goats were counted in Unit 14C, with 22 percent of them kids.
Last year, hunters exceeded the maximum allowable harvest in both areas.
Permits for the registration hunts will be available online (hunt.alaska.gov) or at Fish and Game offices in Anchorage, Palmer and Soldotna beginning Aug. 12.
No red salmon harvest in Larson Creek
Although hundreds of thousands of red salmon have returned to waterways across Southcentral Alaska, at least one run is coming up significantly short.
Larson Creek, a tributary of the Talkeetna River, had seen only 5,020 fish pass its weir through Aug. 2. That's far short of the minimum escapement goal of 15,000 reds, and biologists expect that more than 60 percent of the run has passed upstream by now.
Consequently, anglers cannot keep any sockeyes caught either in Larson Creek or within a quarter-mile of its confluence with the Talkeetna River.